The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Ekiti as Kulaks Archipelago

Remember to praise your enemy and to admire your tormentors. This Orwellian admonition is not from 1984 or any work of fiction. It is from a cameo of contemporary Nigeria. When tormentors begin to commend the tormented for their patience and grace, when famous hooligans lavish praise on their victims for their exemplary civility and courtesy after a heavy beating, you can be sure that the manipulation of human emotions has reached its zenith.

Aleksandr Solzhenitysn might have had contemporary Nigeria in mind when he wrote his great novel of tyranny, Gulag Archipelago. The novel is a tribute to the indomitability of the exceptional human spirit in the face of state terrorism at its most savage and sublime. In its roiling contradictions, its fertile and volatile political lunacies, contemporary Nigeria often recalls both pre-revolution and post revolution Russia.

In the face of harsh repression, even the most exceptional spirit can suddenly collapse. Faced by pure terror, the greatest of human beings slander themselves and tell unbelievable lies against themselves. When Stalin hauled his intellectual superiors and more gifted rivals before the law for treason, they confessed to unimaginable crimes they had not committed and asked for forgiveness. To clinch matters for the terrorist state, they dismissed themselves as being unworthy of mercy and deserving of the most cruel treatment ever imaginable. It is the political equivalent of having an out of body experience. You view yourself with clinical severance, as if it was someone else.

As a result of the frenetic pace of events and the programmed disruption of normal perception, the general disorientation of most Nigerians proceeds apace. Tormentors praise the tormented when they meekly submit to their own brutalization. The meek will surely inherit the earth if they continue to show meekness, they chorus . They will be remembered and honoured for their brand loyalty, they trumpet in alleluia. They are future leaders, they chant to the already enchanted.

The ploy is to drum out the ethical horror of the crime in the universal refrain of giving peace a chance, thereby making it impossible for the few discerning ones to think out of the box. In the event, it is now impossible to make sense of what has just happened in Ekiti. Yet it is our business to make sense out of the senseless. Otherwise, there is no point in writing a column. Is this a major electoral shellacking of the APC and Kayode Fayemi’s much rhapsodised elitist developmental politics, as we are programmed to believe or an elaborate hoax as we are forbidden from thinking?

Let us make a confession because there is no point playing a superman in these matters. For most of the week, Snooper himself has been too distressed and pole-axed to make any sense of the bewildering turn of events. One felt like a boxer so disoriented by punishment that he went and sat on the laps of his opponent. But this time around, it is the thief who has fled with the evidence that has returned to nail himself.

When the congenitally ungallant praise others for their gallantry, something fishy is surely afoot. It is surely curious when the ranking members of the PDP, notoriously truculent and unsportsmanlike in defeat, begin to praise a Fayemi for his quick surrender and hasty capitulation to the PDP rigging leviathan. Up till this moment, the same PDP buccaneers did not raise an eyebrow about Jonathan’s public refusal to congratulate the new Emir of Kano. Nor did they demur about his unsportsmanlike rectitude in congratulating the opposition for successfully holding a national convention against all odds. The two examples are instances of bitter defeat for the PDP which its leadership have refused to graciously swallow. He who comes to gallantry in political sweepstakes must come with clean motives.

While the PDP and its accomplices and collaborators in the corrupt sections of the Nigerian media were deliberately muddying the water in an attempt to obscure another major electoral crime against humanity, it was the electorally humbled Fayemi who was trying to provide a sane and sober rationalisation of what has just happened in the land of rugged hills. In what historians may judge a moment of painful clarity and clairvoyance, Fayemi described his defeat as owing to the emergence of a new sociology of the Ekiti people.

If the PDP power mongers actually understand the nuanced and sophisticated dimensions of this statement, it would have occurred to them that they rejoice too soon. Fayemi himself might have been speaking tongue in cheek in a moment of tormenting despair. Known for their rural hardiness, their folksy heroism and abhorrence of foreign tyranny, the Ekiti people have always acted in unison when they set the template for political integrity and fidelity to a noble cause. The nature of Fayose’s resurgent ascendancy is so deeply polarising that it has set the Ekiti people against themselves.

Irrespective of party affiliation, there is now a Maginot Line between the Ekiti business and educated elite on one hand and the peasant and emergent lumpen-proletariat class on the other. Fayose, a petit-bourgeois with crossover appeal to the lumpen and peasant subclasses, has once again positioned himself as a champion of both. The canons of political contention will be booming in Ekiti land for some time to come. The kiriji sound of canon-firing will not be coming from Igbajo this time around but from the Ekiti hills. If you cannot scale the hilly ascent in haste, then do not visit the land of birds and eggheads for some time to come.

If this is truly a revolt of the masses, Ekiti has had it coming for quite a while. Long-rhapsodised and eulogised as the land of the educationally over-achieving, Ekiti has been falling by the wayside for quite some time. It now boasts of one of the worst records in secondary school certificate examination. In addition, there had been a growing alienation among the youth as the education industry froze up sending thousands of educated but unemployable young people swelling the ranks of the gainfully unemployed.

As for the peasants fabled for their political fidelity and integrity, it would appear that over the years, they have grown cynical and weary of succeeding governments that could not significantly improve their lot even as they worsen the plight and prospects of their children. In the event, they have reverted to the traditional Yoruba skepticism about millennial political expectations. It is now the politics of the belly or stomach infrastructure. In the absence of any overarching social constructs that significantly improves their lot, what the bird eats is what the bird flies with.

It is Ekiti as Kulaks Archipelago. Remember the kulaks? The kulaks were the upper-deck Russian peasant class. They were notorious for their bizarre fetishes, their superstitious idiocies—according to Marx— and above all their counter-revolutionary consciousness. Lenin waged a violent and vicious war against them before he could succeed in collectivising their farms for the major agrarian reforms necessary to launch the new socialist republic on the path of agricultural self-sufficiency. Lenin killed off quite a lot of them . Stubborn and hardy, the kulaks could not understand why they should give up their long-held feudal family holding for some new fangled experimentation in collective farming. They fought off Lenin with savage ferocity and the state response was equally savage. In the event what was supposed to be a revolution for the masses became a social laboratory for their clinical extermination.

Peter Ayodele Fayose does not claim to be a revolutionary or intellectual. He wears his HND badge as if it is rare honour from the British Empire. His mind is uncluttered by books or learning. This gives him a ferocious focus with an eye on the main chance. Fayose is an equal opportunity contrarian and rabble-rouser. If there is something initially endearing about his populist bravura, the opportunity cost would soon be found very prohibitive. Those who thought that they have used Fayose to unhorse the progressive tendency in Ekiti would soon find out that Fayose’s abiding animus is not against the progressive tendency as such but elite tendency as a whole.

Irrespective of party affiliation, the much lionised Ekiti professoriate will have to run for cover. It is not going to be a battle against APC but a war against traditional power barons, including traditional rulers who must now look furtively over their shoulders, if the heavy duty beads permit . Snooper does not think that General Obasanjo would be in a hurry to visit soon so as to update himself on Fayose’s poultry farming. Poultry politics is not for poltroons. As for the Lagos boys who were collecting monthly tithes during Fayose’s first coming, they will discover to their peril that you cannot cross the same river twice. Fayose is a shrewd businessman who knows his real political IOUs.

As this column never tires of propounding, rigging comes in three stages. There is rigging before the election, rigging on election date and rigging after the election. By encouraging Opeyemi Bamidele to desert his political homestead, the PDP, through its political doppelganger the Labour Party, managed to simulate a riggable environment on Ekiti.

By covertly simulating public discourse praising Fayemi for his gallantry, his urbane diffidence and statesmanlike capitulation to obvious electoral heist, the PDP has been trying to fake a public consensus in order to make what happened in Ekiti look like a flawless and transparent electoral subjugation. This is a classic instance of rigging after the election.

But while the collateral damage to the progressive cause and consciousness is enormous and the setback for the regional integration agenda is substantial, the reversal is not fundamental. The reason is simple. Fayose is congenitally and constitutionally incapable sober rationality and nuanced political judgement. After all, a revolt is not a revolution. A revolution requires intellectual philosophers.

Very soon, Ekiti will be embroiled in major political tumults and tempests. Whatever may be their current political ire, a love and respect for orderliness and sane hierarchy is wired into the political DNA of the average Ekiti person. After liberating them from Ibadan tyranny, Fabunmi asked for a crown and was promptly driven out of town. Very soon, they will be looking for philosopher-kings again. And the birds and bards of real freedom will sing on the Ekiti hills once more.

June 29, 2014
Suara bites again

As the Mundial truly got underway in the land of soccer and samba, Okon has been as busy as a bee, smiling all the way to the red light districts of Mushin and Awoyaya. The scam was typically and quintessentially Okonian. What began as a huge and outlandish joke soon turned into a major money spinning machine, with Okon emerging as a soccer pundit, a webless blogger and historian of the mass hysteria induced by football.

Whenever there was a missing historic link, you can be sure that the old rogue would come up with the facts. For example, Okon explained to a swooning crowd of admirers that despite the fact that the team from Mobutu’s Zaire went to the 1974 World Cup in Germany with their witchdoctor and private supply of monkey meat, it did not prevent them from a 9-0 shellacking from Poland. Okon also revealed that the hero of the Cameroun team that qualified for the 1982 World Cup in Spain was their goalkeeper, Thomas Nkono.

Furthermore, Okon disclosed that the name of the witchdoctor of the great Camerounian team of !990 was Baba Bamenda. That was the team that almost caused a civil uprising in Columbia when Higuita, their goalkeeper-sweeper , was spectacularly dispossessed by Roger Mila the great Camerounian striker. There was also the case of Benjamin Massing, the robust Camerounian striker, whose own soccer boot flew out from his left foot after a particularly wicked stud and was promptly red-carded. Massing sheepishly begged the referee to allow him retrieve his boot from far afield.

Everyday, Okon’s football crowd began to multiply in the backyard. He had acquired a second hand generating set and a brand new Hitachi television. He was charging a hefty fees for entrance. A typical day began with Okon’s commentary of the day pasted on a makeshift board which usually attracted passionate discussion from other soccer louts and loonies. It was a paradise of libel. One of Okon’s efforts was titled: Barlotelli is a baboon. The crazy rogue claimed to have privileged information that the gifted but anarchic Italian maestro was the product of a forced union between a mountain gorilla and a Nubian woman.

On Thursday afternoon, Okon’s commentary of the day attracted Snooper’s attention. It was about Luis Suarez, the gifted but troubled Columbian forward , who seemed to have developed a bizarre taste for human flesh on the field of play. Dubbed the cannibal, the Columbian wolf-boy often makes a meal of opponents’ earlobes with the relish of a professional headhunter from Papua New Guinea. But the last one was an ear too far. It has landed the cannibal in soup. When Snooper queried Okon as to why he insisted on calling Suarez by the name Suara when he was not a Nigerian not to talk of being a Yoruba chap, Okon retorted.

“Ah oga dem mad boy be Yoruba boy. He get one Yoruba boy for Mushin like dat and him name be Suara. Anytime we dey fight him go dey bite you when dem thunder blow come dey dabaru him head. So each time I been ask am why him dey use him teeth, him go reply say biting na part of fighting. So I think say dem Suarez be Suara”. On that note, snooper withdrew to his boudoir.

June 29, 2014
The beautiful game is not in the stadium this world cup

The Poor become irrepressible upon discovering they have everything to gain. They become invincible upon discovering they have nothing to lose

The World Cup started roughly 10 days ago. Around the world, most people will focus on the games played within the precise white lines painted on the lush greenery of the stadia floors. Viewers will be guaranteed a fine spectacle as the world’s best footballers battle to obtain their sport’s sacred prize. There also will be another game afoot (forgive the pun). For the socially conscious, this latter game is the most beautiful and significant of the matches to be played. It is a unique one such that, by merely playing, those who initiated it have achieved something profound. This game is the collective street demonstrations against the World Cup and its clumsy local architects, an insensitive and spendthrift government, for having spent so much on a sporting lark while devoting so little to the ways and means of the poor and the poorer.

Many of us will be irked by the protests. We want to view the games unencumbered by Brazil’s stark, harsh economic realities. For the rest of us, the World Cup is the utmost sport’s fantasy. It is a dream-like break from the diurnal grind and gruel. However, nothing is free, not even dreams. This particular one is being paid in real coin by the Brazilian rank and file. Because we are not in Brazil, we lack empathy for the demonstrators. Their hurt is too distant for us to feel. Thus, many see the protesters as interlopers in their own land. People will hope that they are removed so the games continue unimpeded and without the mist of injustice the demonstrations cast on the event. Too many of us feel not the people’s plight and are disinterested in their causes. We are perturbed that they interrupt the glamorous sport we expect to see on our televisions. Their demonstrations turn the atmosphere around the beautiful game into one more closely associated with a society that nurses its people from the bitterest cup.

Government and business leaders downplay the protests, claiming them the work of an extreme few. While acknowledging the high costs of hosting the Cup, the country’s elite asserts the exercise is a worthwhile matter of “national pride.” At such dear expense, wisdom says that pride becomes a luxury ill-afforded by a nation with a teeming population of outcast poor. Pride is a fine contemplation by the properly fed, well housed and adequately clad. However, the type of pride of which the wealthy think has little place among the poor and humble. Pride does not clad or protect the bared foot that must tread the hard road of impoverished life. Pride puts neither onion nor chicken in the cooking pot. Pride does not keep the rain from leaking through a hovel’s shattered roof.

Talk of national pride from those who taste and enjoy things of material excess is the waste water from the hogwash. Four years ago, such propaganda dazzled the average South African and much of Africa. Africans were ecstatic that one of their nations was selected to host the expensive affair. For the elite it was a true honour. For the poor, it would become a surreptitious burden. The nation paid a princely sum to win the purported honour. It would pay a thousand king’s ransoms to make the world’s most elaborate soccer match occur. Africans beamed proudly that South Africa proved able to build the large stadia and infrastructure essential to the games. Yet, that outburst of pride was disappointingly jejune. A stupefying racial inferiority had crept into the space that historic perspective and racial confidence should have occupied. Looking at the Pyramids, one would be reminded Africans have been constructing large buildings for some time. The South African construction challenge would be met. However, it would be with costs aplenty.

The most charitable objective measure would show that the World Cup had a negligible positive economic effect, at best. Most other accurate measures would say it did more economic harm than good when looking at its effect on the urban poor. The funds used would have had greater benefit if used to enhance social services. Instead, money was spent on stadia many of which are rarely used and falling into disrepair. Jobs were created during the construction binge. But the tasks were transient. The employment exited as soon as the footballers came.

Tourist money came but mostly went to the high-end local and international hoteliers and official vendors that support events like the World Cup. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of poor shanty dwellers and squatters were uprooted to make room for the construction or simply because they were eyesores the South African government wanted to hide. They hoped to give the impression South Africa had conquered apartheid. To accomplish this public relations feat, they simply removed the unsightly poor from vision. If you don’t see the poor, they do not exist was the logic. Poor South Africans would remain mum to the ill treatment for they had been promised that they too would profit from the games if they only exercised patience. It was only after the competition had ended, did the South African poor realise the game had been mostly played on their backs. They had been conned into believing they would sip the nectar, only to realise the intention was always to have the chalice pass over them. By the time they realised they had been inveigled, the parade had left. It had left them behind to sweep up the detritus of the great event and its numerous revelers.

Having seen the Cup’s ill-effects on South Africa, socially-conscious Brazilians would not sit quietly as their government planned a repeat of the sordid economic injustice committed in South Africa. They took to the streets, this time not to carnival but to canvass against the waste of the event. Because of this, the most important game played now in the samba nation will not be found in any stadium. This game pits the will and mood of the people against the business-as-usual approach of a government that appears not to sense the mood of the people it claims to lead.

Many people view Brazil as the official home of football. Yet, 61 percent of the nation opposes hosting the World Cup or, at least, the high price tag (11.3 billion dollar) associated with the rollicking affair. This is a nation known for its zest for music, carnival and sand and sport. Its people are thought of as being serious at taking nothing seriously. The protests destroy that stereotype, bringing us closer to the reality of these people. It is good to view another person’s reality. In doing so, at times, you get a better hold of your own.

Brazil is a charter member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), that exclusive club of large, middle-income nations of growing international economic clout. Despite this fine status, Brazil is home to some of the most wretched neighborhoods imaginable. The social and economic topography of the city of Rio de Janeiro reverses the normal trend. In most cities, the rich occupy the hills and high ground while the poor huddle below. In Rio, poor favelas litter the hills as the rich occupy the choice coastal ground. Life in the favelas is not for the squeamish. It is a hard and violent maelstrom of poverty, despair, illicit activity, sickness and premature death. You don’t flourish in these neighborhoods; you merely survive them. This is the life of tens of millions of Brazilians, and these Brazilians represent billions of people around the world.

They like football; but, they are considerably fonder of their families. They don’t dream of the chance of seeing another beautifully-played game brought to them at the costs of billions of dollars. They dream of living a beautiful life. This is not to belittle the social utility of sports.

There is something about sporting events that help the human psyche cope with what confronts it. However, that respite comes attached to trenchant opportunity costs. Paying for the World Cup means government foregoing something else. As in South Africa, while the construction was ongoing, jobs were created. They are now gone. Some service jobs will increase during the games but they too will vanish at the final whistle. Infrastructural improvements were made that will help even after the games. However, these projects were geared to serve the logistical requirements of the games. Thus, this new infrastructure will not be optimal once things return to normal. It will be of reduced inefficiency over the long-term, a good investment poorly made. Put more bluntly, the long-term utility of the projects does not equal the expense of the things. This especially applies to the high-cost stadia. After the games, these expensive structures will be of little value. They will become inactive and then start to decay.

The World Cup is a spectacular event. We all love to watch it, except those uninitiated to the game. Even they are coming to embrace it. However, not every nation should host such a thing. For nations with large percentages of poor people to spend money on this escapade is a noisome decision revealing either an ignorance of the economic consequences of the games or a cold indifference to the lives of the poor and broken in society. The people of Brazil have seen a great pile of money tossed into games that will avail them little. They wonder why more funds can’t be targeted to services and activities that would avail their lives much. Thus, many have taken to the streets.

What they do will not halt the games; but, what they do should remind us that no game is more important than the people’s welfare. Their protests will mar the glamour of the event. In a way that is sad. But what they do is of greater value than the glamour of the event. This is because their efforts speak to the humanitarian spirit. They are like poor relatives coming to the rich man’s party to remind him the money he stole had paid for the lavish affair. They seek recompense. The confrontation is awkward to see, but necessary to occur. Justice demands such confrontations so that we remember who is the true giver and taker, who is right and who is wrong.

Making established powers uncomfortable and exposing their injustice is how progress is attained. In real life, this is the beautiful game. As you watch your favorite team pursue the World Cup, remember that all that is at stake in this arena is a shiny cup. The greater game is being outside the stadia because it will determine whether more quality will be injected into the lives of the average Brazilian. This is the real people’s game, even if many people seem oblivious to it. No matter the immediate outcome of the protests, the people have already won something just by demonstrating against an elite event once politically unassailable because the people held it in rapt awe. The Brazilians now demonstrate that at least in one nation the people are no longer to be distracted from their unjust reality no matter how beautiful the game used to beguile them.

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June 22, 2014
The crisis of knowledge Production in Nigeria

For the past 10 months or so, all the polytechnics in the nation as well as colleges of education have been firmly under lock as a result of an industrial dispute with the federal government. The federal authorities carry on as if technical education in particular is totally irrelevant or surplus to requirement in their purported bid to transform the nation. But then even the federal universities get a fraction of what they need only after protracted closures.

Yet at the root of the organic crisis that grips the nation is the crisis of knowledge production. A crisis of knowledge production occurs when the sum-total of knowledge available in a society can no longer guarantee meaningful and harmonious existence or serve as the solid basis for human development and self-actualisation.

This is usually a period of darkness in which a society disabled by historic cataract gropes in vain for the answers which must come from its own exertions, or if all fail, from the antagonistic logic supplied by conquering invaders who must then cite their superior knowledge and awareness as the basis and justification for humane intervention.

It is usually a time of dark superstitions and even darker mythologies. It is a time of murderous ignorance, with homicidal hordes on the loose. Ignorance of knowledge never leads to knowledge of ignorance. It leads to arrogance in ignorance. Those who prevail do so not because of superior knowledge or learning but because of superior brute force. Even in a society where the knowledge-order has collapsed, somebody must lead the way, if only by ignorant example.

Leading in ignorance will not solve a nation’s problems. It can only compound them. Knowledge deficit is at the heart of the looming collapse of governance at every level in Nigeria. Yet that collapse is inevitable unless this country finds some fundamental answers to the fundamental questions plaguing its continued existence.

Four years ago at the Convocation Lecture of the Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu, yours sincerely addressed some of the contentious issues surrounding polytechnic education in Nigeria. This morning, we bring you excerpts.

June 15, 2014
Boko Haram: Sri Lankan strategy has its pitfalls

While presenting a security briefing to their Nigerian counterparts last Tuesday, visiting Sri Lankan military chiefs led by their Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya, suggested that Nigeria could borrow a leaf from the strategies the Indian Ocean Island country used to defeat terrorism on its soil. If the response of the Nigerian Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh, is anything to go by, the Nigerian military may be actively considering adopting aspects of the Sri Lankan war strategy that led to the defeat of Tamil Tigers after more than 26 years of civil war and militancy. It is not clear who invited the Sri Lankans to make the presentation, or whether their presentation was unsolicited. From the body language of the visitors and their Nigerian hosts, however, it seems that what caught the attention of the Nigerians is the last stage of the Sri Lankan anti-terror war that lasted between 2006 and 2009, and in particular the Sri Lankan military doctrine of “Total Security.”

The Nigerian military reacts testily to unfavourable public opinion, particularly in regards to its capability and tactics after just five years of fighting Boko Haram insurgents. Their Sri Lankan visitors fought a 26-year civil war. But testy or not, with the hint given by Air Chief Marshall Badeh that Nigeria could adopt aspects of the Sri Lankan strategy, this column would like to caution the military to reflect a little more, especially in view of its widely despised assault on civil liberties. According to a statement by the military, Air Chief Marshall Badeh had last Tuesday said: “The Nigerian military is seriously considering the counterinsurgency experience of the Sri-Lankan military with a view to identifying those areas that could be operationally beneficial to Nigeria in its battle to defeat terrorism.” Comparisons are odious, say the British. It may therefore be necessary for the Nigerian military to take a holistic view of the Sri Lankan War in order to understand its beginnings, its course and its end before embarking on adoptions and adaptations.

Some four countries are lending Nigeria a helping hand in combating terrorism and in the effort to rescue the more than 200 Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram since April 15. None of the four has made a presentation like the Sri Lankans have done. So, if the Indian Ocean country is being given a hearing by the Nigerian military, it may suggest that something may already be afoot, especially in the direction of the so-called Total Security, or in the words of President Goodluck Jonathan, Total War. But the Sri Lankan strategy portends grave danger. It must be emphasised that neither the Sri Lankans nor their Nigerian counterparts are talking about military tactics. They are talking about strategy. And as far as strategy goes, a number of elements cannot and must not be discountenanced in planning the defeat of Boko Haram, if Nigeria is not to end up complicating and worsening the anti-terror war.

Sri Lanka may have defeated the terrorist Tamil Tigers in 2009, but that country’s democratic credentials remain suspect, with no prospect for a change for the better anytime soon. In fact the consensus is that the 26-year civil war “undermined democracy and eroded the rule of law.” The United Nations (UN) estimates that some 12,000 people detained by Sri Lankan security forces have disappeared, and are presumed murdered by the state. Sri Lanka acknowledges that about half of the detainees have died. The civil war itself cost about 80,000 to 100,000 lives, about half of them civilians. The UN reckons that serious rights abuses were perpetrated by both sides in the war, abuses the world body appears set to investigate to establish war crimes.

Sri Lanka may have defeated Tamil insurgency, but it is a country with a population of less than 21 million, a little more populous than Lagos State. In addition, its demographic make-up is infinitely less complex. With more than 70 percent Sinhalese majority and less than 12 percent Tamil, the civil war was a straightforward Sinhalese versus Tamil conflict. Nigeria’s ethnic and religious pastiche is on the other hand problematically complex, a situation Boko Haram has more imaginatively exploited and aggravated. Total War or Total Security may seem sound on paper, in reality, however, the Nigerian anti-terror war calls for a much deeper understanding of the issues involved and a scientific approach to solving it. Unfortunately, like the Iraqi insurgency, every step the Nigerian government and military have taken so far has worsened the conflict.

Moreover, the Nigerian military must appreciate the causes of the Sri Lankan Civil War in order to understand whether its lessons and solutions can be adapted in any way to the Nigerian situation. The political elite of the Sinhalese majority bear the larger responsibility for the beginnings of the Tamil revolt. Like Ukraine, not only did they enact insensitive language laws (The Sinhala Only Act) and other cultural, educational and political laws that discriminated against Tamils (Policy of Standardisation and the 1978 Constitution that gave preference to Buddhism), they also ignored all avenues to make peace before the problem got out of hand. Up till now, the lessons of that war have still not been fully learnt, nor has peace led to greater freedoms and deeper democratic practices. It is however understandable why Sri Lanka inspires the Nigerian military. Given the Nigerian military’s assault on the media in the past one week, and the active connivance of the Jonathan presidency, it is clear it is as uninterested in democracy as the Sri Lankan military and government have continued to restrict civil liberties.

Before adapting the Sri Lankan strategy, it is hoped that Nigeria’s military chiefs had received full briefings from their visiting counterparts. It is hoped they understood the shifting roles India played in the war, before and after Tamils assassinated ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, how India, through its peace keeping force, the IPKF, changed sides in the conflict many times, including sometimes fighting on the side of the Tamils and supplying them weapons and also fighting on the side of the Sri Lankan Army when they thought it expedient. India, which has a Tamil (Nadu) State, does not of course want a Tamil country on its Southeast coast. It is hoped that the Nigerian military understands the geopolitical considerations of that war. It is also hoped that Nigeria understands that Sri Lanka’s Total Security cannot be replicated in Nigeria without dire consequences. The Boko Haram war can of course be won, but it is not by adopting the Sri Lankan strategy. For a nation of about 160 million, Nigeria would be sailing near the wind to adopt the war strategy of a country where in a base population of about 20m, 70 percent Sinhalese population, roughly speaking, faced about 11 percent Tamil population.

The Nigerian military should look inwards for explanation for the failure of its strategy in the Boko Haram war. Rather than hunt the media in an objectionable affront to the constitution, and accuse those who criticise its failure to fight a clinical war of lack of patriotism, it should ask itself why it has been unable to devise successful war tactics against insurgents it claims to have restricted to a forest of about 600 sq km. The Boko Haram insurgency resembles the Iraqi insurgency in their adoption of guerrilla tactics. The Sri Lankan conflict, notwithstanding rampant terror attacks, was mainly a conventional military/secessionist rebellion. If the Americans with all their military and technological might failed in Iraq and left the country a seething cauldron, why does Nigeria think it can use the tactics of conventional war to pulverize guerrilla insurgents? After its 2009 debacle, Boko Haram has refused to let itself be pinned down in a conventional war. Against whom, therefore, will the Nigerian military declare total war?

It is embarrassing that Nigerian commanders cannot formulate a unique, homegrown strategy that takes into consideration the country’s cultural, religious and political configurations, a strategy that promotes its latent ambition to lead Africa. By fishing for strategies and inspiration in far-flung places like Sri Lanka, Nigeria gives the depressing impression of a country in precipitous decline, one lacking in vision and ambition for the future. The Boko Haram war should be fought without eroding civil liberties, and without endangering the constitution. There should be enough first class brains in the military to forge the right mix and temper of strategies to carry out the objective. If Dr Jonathan is unable to understand this, his brilliant commanders, if he has them, should educate him.

June 15, 2014
Our republic, of monarchs?

Why should members of the ruling party at the centre or any other party for that matter be upset about who is chosen as emir in Kano?

Nigeria is a country where contradictions thrive or triumph, without anyone needing to be seen to do anything untoward. Our country carries the nomenclature of a federal republic. Yet, its federating units can make laws without the power to enforce them. This contradiction is justified by those in charge of statecraft on the ground that this is the only way to keep the multiethnic country’s unity indissoluble. Some two decades ago, the country was called a secular republic until its citizens woke up one day to find out that its military dictator had registered it in the Organisation of Islamic States (OIC). It is now being characterised as a multi-religious country even though it is still officially a member of OIC and a section of the country is killing to force other religions to submit to Sharia. Most recent in our rulers’ bizarre actions is the increased attention being given and sought for monarchs of various names: Emirs, Obas, Obis, Obongs, etc. A few days ago, the death of the former Emir of Kano, Ado Bayero, a man of peace and of enviable inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations during his reign, has been made to increase the country’s insecurity by republican rulers scheming to take advantage of the trappings of monarchy.

As if the insecurity created by Boko Haram and its insistence that Nigeria must cease to be a secular state but a theocracy run by Islamic clerics functioning as kings or emirs is not enough, several political rulers seem preoccupied with adding another source of insecurity to the one that the international community believes has become too enormous for the country’s security forces to manage. As if the seizure of over 200 innocent schoolgirls is not enough to make politicians of all stripes reflect about the incapacity of the proverbial African Big Men to govern properly in a modern democratic context, those in charge of governance choose to be entangled with raising the adrenalin level of the entire country by turning what should have been an entirely local affair of Kano city into a nation-wide drama of the absurd: death of an emir; nomination of a successor; threats to arrest the emir designate before investiture; threats by street urchins to vandalize the emir’s palace; virtual relocation or incarceration of the new emir in the governor’s guest house, etc.

If Nigeria were truly a republic, no mention would have been made in the public sphere of any manner of monarchy— of the turban popular in Northern Nigeria or of the beaded hats popular in Southern Nigeria. If Nigeria were really a republic, no head of state would call for special roles for traditional rulers in constitutional governance. If delegates at the ongoing national conference believe that Nigeria is a republic, they would not countenance the section of the items handed to them from the presidency for consideration with respect to carving a role for traditional rulers in government and in the constitution. It is clear that everybody that has a role to play in governance believes that the constitution he or she has sworn to uphold is full of lies that must be nurtured, without appearing to do so.

How else is any lay observer of public affairs to respond to reports that the riots in Kano since the succession of Ado Bayero by Lamido Sanusi— both of the Ibrahim Dabo ruling family in Kano for centuries— are reasons for heated rhetorical fight between rival political parties? Why should members of the ruling party at the centre or any other party for that matter be upset about who is chosen as emir in Kano? Aren’t the four kingmakers required to submit the final list of nominees to the governor of the state in which Kano is situated? Did the kingmakers disagree with the announcement of Lamido Sanusi when the governor announced his name as the new Emir of Kano? On whose behalf are the urchins on the streets demonstrating and what are they demonstrating against? Do these protesters no longer believe in the age-old selection process? If they do not, do they then have a right to expect that their preferred candidate would be nominated at the end of a process they do not find credible? What has been happening in Kano in the last few days illustrates that once a leadership group harbours and nurtures irreconcilable contradictions in the constitution and governance process of their country, citizens, particularly those with little education and the type that are easily indoctrinated and recruited to serve as suicide bombers are easy targets to be recruited to protest against the choice of kingmakers.

Should it matter if Lamido Sanusi were sympathetic to APC or PDP before his nomination as emir? Is Sanusi as emir not obligated to serve (and appear to do so) as emir to all the people of Kano, regardless of their political affiliations? Is there any evidence that Ado Bayero was a member of any of the political parties before he died? Is the son of Ado Bayero who some political leaders are believed to prefer and had congratulated before announcement of the final nominee a member of PDP? If he were, could the young Bayero have sustained that membership after ascending to the throne of his father? Do emirs have power to change the pattern of votes or the results of votes cast for political parties? Why is it important in this country of ours that the emir of Kano is sympathetic to APC or PDP if elections are guaranteed to be free and fair, and devoid of any form of intimidation by any branch of the security forces? In over sixty years that I had been witnessing elections in the country, there had been no report of an emir or oba going to the polls to vote for any candidate. So, what is the basis of the do-or-die attitude to whomever the people of Kano choose to be their emir?

If traditional rulers are so influential to the extent that citizens cannot vote rationally once they are influenced by traditional rulers in their vicinity, then the time is ripe for the country to review its political structure and form of government. In the days of Lugardian Indirect Rule, traditional rulers in the Northern and Western Regions were powerful, but politicians decided not to allow the British to hand over the regions or the entire country to traditional rulers. This was why the country opted for constitutional governance and later for republican status.

Every day, things happen in our country to suggest that those who rule us are confused people. In one breadth, they want to run a modern republican state. In another, they want to acquire traditional titles to give them the appearance of having some pedigree in traditional rulership. Even in sections of the country that the colonial masters had to create paramount chiefs for lack of traditional rulers, politicians are in the habit of creating titles that entitle them to the regalia of traditional rulers.

In the meantime, the president should further the spirit of unity of purpose he evinced on June 12 to reprimand members of his party who sent congratulatory messages prematurely to the young Bayero. Such party fanatics have embarrassed the president and knowingly or unknowingly added to the country’s security challenges. The security problem that is being brewed in Kano over a function consigned to the Residual list in our pre-republican days shows that the lust for power to exploit the people by our post-colonial politicians is not any different from what made Frederick Lugard introduce the Indirect Rule in Nigeria. Serious-minded citizens need to let our political rulers know they are already too frustrated after three or more years of the violence from Boko Haram to be made to serve as cannon fodder in a fight between pro-monarchy political groups that should have no space in a modern republic.

June 15, 2014
#BringBackFayemi

Ordinarily, Saturday polls should be a walkover for the incumbent

It’s been quite some time since I wrote on Ekiti State. Like most other Nigerians, I seemed to have gone to bed, believing that there is no reason to focus on that state, especially since it is now doing well in accordance with the aspirations of its founding fathers. But this is not the time to be silent on a state renowned for its erudite scholars, at least not with the vultures and predators now lurking around, waiting to reap where they did not sow.

Before I proceed to justify my support for the Kayode Fayemi administration, let me acknowledge the role played by the former governor of the state, Olusegun Oni, in the build-up to the coming June 21 governorship election in the state. Without prejudice to what anybody might say about the point that I want to make concerning Oni, the former governor under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), especially now that he has joined the All Progressives Congress (APC), I wish to salute Oni’s courage and forthrightness. I recall that in the course of the struggle by the then Action Congress (AC) to retrieve its stolen mandate from Oni a few years back, I was annoyed when a respected senior colleague told me that he knew Oni very well to be a gentleman.

I had wondered how a gentleman could be comfortable not only keeping a stolen property, but also having the temerity to face the owner in court. With the benefit of hindsight, I now know better. It is not many people who will make the kind of decision that Oni made to join the APC, as he put it, in the interest of Ekiti State. As the former governor rightly said, it is the future of the state that is at stake in the coming governorship election. Oni had the choice of joining forces with those who do not share such an aspiration, and go to the centre for some filthy lucre, even as he knows deep in his heart that the PDP has no chance of winning any free and fair election in the state; he did not consider that option. This is a rarity in our clime. I salute his courage.

Back to Fayemi. It is when orange is not sweet that one will be satisfied sucking just one; but when the oranges are juicy and sweet, one could suck as many as one feels like sucking. I hardly endorse political candidates in my column, whatever the political party they belong to, unless I have sufficient reason to so do. I guess the last time I did that was during the reelection bid of Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State. I also did that for Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State. And for those who might be wondering why it is only governors of the AC or APC that I am mentioning, let me also say that I have had cause to celebrate Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State in this column way back as three years ago when no one could have thought he would join the APC. All these are acclaimed achievers, politics apart. Again, for those who might want to say whether it is only in the south that we have performers, the answer is no. The point is that before I put pen on paper to say this candidate is good, I must be sure of my facts, and my main criterion is achievement.

It is on that same pedestal that I stand today to commend Fayemi to Ekiti voters. Under normal circumstances, the election should be a walkover for Fayemi. His work should speak for him. But we are not in a country where circumstances are ever normal. Indeed, ours is a country where there is always cause for concern because everything is perpetually under alarm, especially when the matter has to do with elections. What I am saying is that we are in a place where elections cannot be taken for granted, particularly when the PDP is involved. This is a party that has achieved next-to-nothing even at the centre , yet, it is its president who has been going about marketing the party’s candidates, a president who should lose his deposit even in his own ward! But that is Nigeria for you. And that, precisely, is what anyone who wants to contest the election with Fayemi wants to do: ride on the crest of that ubiquitous ‘federal might’, which in sane climes would have guaranteed nothing but electoral disaster. The people of Ekiti have tasted what life could be like under a PDP government and they have also tasted it under Fayemi and have seen the difference. There is just no basis for comparison. The gap between both is wider than that between apple and oranges.

After the years of the locust, the south west has rediscovered its lost compass; it has woken up from its slumber to remember that the region used to be the pace setter in terms of development in the country. It is instructive that the governors of most states in the region know that they are like cows without tails that are at the mercy of God to ward off flies, unlike their PDP counterparts that look up to the Federal Government for crutches at election time. Even if that explains the efforts being made by governors in the region, particularly in Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ekiti and Lagos states, including even Edo in the south south to leave enviable legacies that they would be proud of, it is something. What matters is that progress is being made in these states.

I was in Ekiti about five years ago, and I was there again in December, last year. What I saw was amazing. It is unimaginable that anyone would have been able to make such a difference in less than four years, especially when it is realised that the state is not among those awash with petro-dollars. What are we talking about? Is it Fayemi’s social welfare grant of N5,000 to every old citizen in the state? This is commendable in a country where pensioners are left to their own device. And the uncommon transformation of the Ikogosi Warm Springs? Roads, especially intra-state roads in Ekiti are in good condition such that it takes only about one hour to travel from the state capital to anywhere in the state. Fayemi’s covenant with Ekiti people is encapsulated in his eight-point agenda which he has been pursuing diligently. “My eight-point agenda would be pursued with vigour and life would be more abundant for our people. Governance shall not only be transparent and accountable but the good of our people would be the template,” the governor said during his inauguration in 2010. He has largely kept faith with that promise.

Without doubt, those who chose Ayo Fayose (PDP) to contest against Fayemi either wanted the PDP to fail in the state ab initio or are relying on something else to ‘win’ the election. This was the same Fayose who established a poultry project worth over N1billion as governor in the state which Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (also a PDP president then) was shocked the usual smell associated with poultries was missing in Fayose’s poultry when he visited the place! As a farmer, Chief Obasanjo should know and he did know that the poultry was a ruse. Moreover, Fayose has all manner of allegations hanging on his neck like a necklace of iron, and it is only a party suffering from an acute shortage of good men that could have fielded such a candidate and expect to win an election.

All said, what people are pleading for is that the June 21 election in Ekiti State be free and fair. No more, no less. And that cannot be a misguided plea. Those who are relying on wars and chariots or crutches from the Federal Government or the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the election are advised to go dust up their history books. A word is enough for the wise.

June 15, 2014
Is the fundamental question a weakened centre or a just and workable centre? (2)

Last week, I suggested a constitutional provision of the death penalty for public officeholders who loot 100 million or more from the public purse. But what constitutional sanctions must we make to end or substantially curb the myriad of legal and structural acts of looting and wasting of our national wealth. For instance, what are we to do about the humungous salaries and jumbo allowances that are paid out to the members of the National Assembly? What are we to do about the fact that an iron-clad cloak of secrecy has been officially thrown around the actual figures? By some accounts, the Senators and Honourables each receive about 23 million naira a month. Meanwhile, at 18,000 naira per month, the national minimum wage – which by the way, is yet to be implemented in many states of the federation – that puts the ratio between the lowest paid worker in our country to the sums paid out to the members of the National Assembly at 1 to 106. This is one of the worst income gaps in the world – if indeed it is not the very worst. How can a federation be founded on such an unconscionable social cannibalistic but legal looting of our national assets?

As if the scandalous case of the Senators and Honourables is not enough, think of the other perfectly legal acts of brigandage that are rife in the processes of governance in Nigeria. One startling aspect of this fully legalised looting and wasting of our national assets is the freewheeling manner in which the President and the Executive Governors dip into public coffers to patronise and reward their followers, kinsmen and women and cronies. Take the case of Jonathan’s fleet of 12 presidential jets. Obviously, Jonathan cannot be so besotted with jets that he would use presidential prerogative to satisfy a rather childish whim. The present has 12 jets because he must let those on a small list of the most favored among his patrons and clients to use a presidential jet to travel within the country and on occasions, outside the country. Emirs, obas, obis, archbishops, chief imams and men and women of substance – it is a large band of patrons and clients of the President who regularly fly the skies of our country and the world gratis, all expenses paid. If the Governors do not have access to the magnitude of public funds to buy a dozen jets, they make up for this by the scale on which they dole out largesse to their clients. The whole political order is built on clientilism, a clientilism that means in effect that what we have in our country is one head of state and 36 mini heads of state. No country in the world, least of all a poor, developing country that is deluded by flowing oil revenues to seeing itself as super rich country, no country in the world can afford the level and the impunity with which our President and the Chief Executives of the States routinely dip their hands in to the public purse to satisfy their patrons and clients. In one particularly otiose expression of this clientilism gone mad, Moslem and Christian pilgrims to Mecca and Jerusalem respectively are awarded “scholarships” that take them to and back from the “holy lands” gratis, all expensed paid. And this happens on an annual basis.

Clientilism of one kind or another exists in all the countries of the world. It has always been a part of the processes of governance. But countries that have successfully modernized have found ways to curb it substantially, if not wipe it out. The sad, tragic fact is that in our country, far from being gradually brought under control, it is festering and it now pervades the entire system of governance. For this reason, the enlightened and progressive governors who know that clientilism exercises a crippling and wasting effect on governance think that they are trapped within a system from which they cannot extricate themselves.

I would like to suggest that this is a false and misleading dilemma. The “solution” is in fact quite simple: the loud calls for reducing the constitutional power and authority of the President at the centre in Abuja must be extended to reducing the powers and authority of the Governors. Again I repeat the obvious: no nation on the planet can afford the waste and squandermania that has become entrenched in our country in the last three decades. In plain language, no nation can afford to have thirty-seven heads and mini heads of state. And the only rational way to do this is to simultaneously reduce the power and authority of the Presidency and the Governors. Since this seems to be such a wild, improbable aspiration at the present moment, it is imortant that we briefly explore the reasons why this is so.

For Nigerians under the age of thirty, it may come as a surprise to discover that at one time in the postcolonial history of our country, both at the centre and in the regions, power and prestige was institutionally split between the head of government and the head of state. At the centre, the head of government was the Prime Minister while the head of state was the Governor General. In the regions, the head of state was the Governor while the head of government was the Premier. Thus, at both the centre and in the regions, the dignity and majesty of office was ceremonially attached to the Governor General and Governor while the Prime Minister and the Premiers shouldered the burden of governing. With the emergence of Governors in the states, the governance duties and the ceremonial majesties of both the old Premier and Governor were merged. Thus the new Governors are nothing remotely like the old Governors most of whom in fact embodied the institutional though purely ceremonial grandeur of their office.

One of most objectionable features of the power, authority and prestige of the new Governors is a habit that they all indulge in, almost without exception, of a predilection for very large pools of cabinet members, special advisers, personal assistants and press liaison officers. The cost of maintaining such large cadres of highly paid officials is truly staggering, especially in light of the fact that most of these posts are redundancies and sinecures in which people collect money for doing next to nothing. With the old Premiers, between 10 to 12 cabinet members and advisers was the standard upper limit. Indeed, if you compare figures between the two periods, it will be amazing to discover how regions which were broken into states had less cabinet members that each of states that were created from them.

In all the conversations on federalism in Nigeria, there is hardly any thought given to the fact that it is not only the centre whose power and authority should be reduced but that of the Governors. Somehow, we have all be conned or duped into believing that the Governors represent the dignity and sovereignty of their states: In Akwa Ibom, the Governor is an embodiment of the dignity and sovereignty of Akwa Ibomites; In the Oyo State Governor resides the dignity of Oyo state citizens. And so on and so forth. Meanwhile, in terms of actual lived experience of the populace “dignity” and “sovereignty” mean for the vast majority of the states in our country poverty, insecurities of life and grim hardships in the future. And indeed, it can never be overstated: no country in the world can afford the governance costs of having thirty-seven heads and mini heads of state.

Many pundits and commentators on federalism in Nigeria in the last three to four decades take the view that the fundamental cause of the problems and crises now is the change from a British-style parliamentary system with a Prime Minster who is elected into office with members of his cabinet and the new American-style Presidential system in which the Presidents and the Governors get elected on their own recognition and choose their cabinet members who are, for the most part, unelected. I contend that this is only part of the story. More central is the fact that when we had the cost-effective parliamentary system, we simply could not afford the Presidential system because the nation was run on a political economy of cash or export crops and there simply was not enough surplus extraction from the cash crop economy to sustain the phenomenally high cost of the Presidential system.

What kind of constitutional provisions and institutional arrangements can bring the much-needed reform to this state of things? We need enforceable and justiciable constitutional provisions that will place severe limits on how much the President and the Governors can spend on the cost of governance and recurrent expenditures. In every state, the expenditure on capital projects should be at least three times the expenditure on recurrent expenditures. And instead of “Governors” we should give them a new designation to reflect their reduced power and authority. We could look to places like Ghana where their “Governors” are called “Regional Minister” or India where they are called “Chief Ministers”. If the vast sums of money that is flowing into our national coffers from oil revenues can be protected from the great looting and squandermania with which it is currently over-burned and put to good use, Nigeria will easily become the economic engine of the West Africa region. Such a vision ought to inspire our statesmen and thinkers among the political class but alas, alas, we look for such leaders in vain. The old adage comes to mind here: he on whose head a palm kernel is cracked will not live to be among those that will consume the kernel.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

June 15, 2014
Jonathan’s obsession with ‘negative forces’

President Goodluck Jonathan’s speech at the All-Political Parties Summit in Abuja last week took Nigerian politics to an abysmal low as it blamed everyone else but himself and his party for the country’s parlous state. It is now obvious that with every speech he makes, many of them spontaneous, inappropriate and misconceived, Nigerians feel more forlorn than ever. “There are still very remorseless anti-democratic forces operating in the political system, ever ready to exploit lapses in the management of our political and electoral processes,” the president began bafflingly. And he went on to predict that some of those forces, whose lifestyle he found objectionable, could endanger “the nation’s hard-won democratic liberty.” Mercifully, he never claimed to number among those who fought for that liberty, nor has he ever in any of his speeches given indication that he recognised the philosophical underpinnings of that liberty, let alone be willing, in accordance with the oath he took on assumption of office, to defend and uphold the constitution. A pointer to his miscomprehension of the concept of democratic liberty, as he put it, is his unconscionable and “remorseless” assault on the media.

Appealing to people he called “dear compatriots”, the president spoke of his resolve and that of the country “never to allow these negative forces to prevail,” especially with the 2015 elections around the corner. But apart from the Boko Haram menace, the president does not appear to illustrate the negative forces he so glibly spoke about. Surely, he could not mean his critics, the political opposition, and the media, for these other groups have proved more resolute in defending civil rights than he and his conservative, if not entirely reactionary, aides and supporters. But the president was not done.

“The current national political outlook with regards to inter-party collaboration is less than salutary,” he said timidly. “Indeed, the conduct and utterances of leading politicians at home and abroad are rapidly creating and spreading unnecessary tension in the country. Such unguarded utterances on their part fan the embers of discord, bitterness and rancour. Such unfortunate development plays into the hands of extremist elements waging a vicious campaign of terror against the state.” It is all but clear where the military got its inspiration to assault the “democratic liberty” the president so casually referred to. He is obsessively angered by criticisms, having once described himself hyperbolically as the most abused president in the world. In his worldview, “unguarded utterances” rather than atrocious and ill-considered policies, repression, injustice etc. give fillip to insurgency and foster rancour and bitterness. It is hard to resist the temptation to throw up one’s hands in frustration.

But worse was still to come. “We must never politicise the fundamentals and core imperatives of defending the state,” argued the president pretentiously. “Doing so can only embolden the terrorists and other enemies of our republics who will seek to employ any perceived political and social division for their nefarious ends.” It is not clear where the president got the idea that his critics had politicised the imperative of defending the country against insurgency. The problem, we all know, is his government’s unresponsiveness to the insurgency, his appalling misreading of the revolt, and his general refusal to inspire both the military and the country to fight. These are the things that draw everyone’s ire.

What the president wants is a docile society upon which to build a lazy construct of governance. Neither he nor his distracted military will get that kind of society, not even if they destroy the constitution to which they have been serially unfaithful. His deadpan that “Our political parties must remain positive and constructive in their engagements as we seek to build virile and stable nation that can compete with other states in the world” is all the more inappropriate for the simple reason that in his more than four years in office, Dr Jonathan has not given us a concise description of the virile and stable nation he yearns for. We can find no such vision in his speeches and actions. All we see is a bitter and rancorous president allergic to opposition and criticism, a president determined to shred the fabric that knits the Nigerian society together and willing to deploy all security forces at his disposal to reduce the country to a groveling and pitiable giant. He can rest assured we will not oblige him.

June 15, 2014
Ekiti 2014: PDP demonic plans shall fail

Vote Fayose and turn this distinctively unique state into a plaything for not only President Jonathan and his Niger Delta boys but also the likes of Buruji Kashamu and Bode George

For ten straight weeks on this column, I have done nothing else besides predicting, from what as a trained historian ,I know of its decade and a half stranglehold on Nigeria, what the PDP would be up to in the run down to the Ekiti election which they, from Abuja to Otueke, see as the opening chapter of President Goodluck Jonathan’s consuming 2015 ambition for which nothing is considered too sacrosanct to give and that includes the very survival of Nigeria. I wrote about the role of the first lady in Fayose’s emergence, allegedly claiming that he is the only one with the ‘craze’ to deal with a stubborn Ekiti people as well as the recruitment of some ‘billionaire’ political jobbers both of which accounted for the emergence of Fayose and Omisore as governorship candidates in Ekiti and Osun respectively. As a result of that imposition in Ekiti, 18 chieftains of the party, in an advertorial in THIS DAY of Wednesday June 11, 2014 disowned

Fayose claiming that with ‘his questionable antecedents, and for not possessing the required temperament, disposition, and the capacity to deliver good government to Ekiti, they cannot, in good conscience, work for him’. Among them are Chief Ojo Falegan, Dr Bode Olowoporoku, Rt. Hon Kola Adefemi, Otunba Reuben Famuyibo, Ropo Adesanya, Chief Dapo Alibaloye, Sir Kayode Otitoju and Justice Edward Ojuolape (RTD)

I interpreted the involvement of a Niger Delta militant, as coordinator of their South West security strategy, not only as a cheap sellout of Yoruba people to a tiny Ijaw nation, but as the most direct evidence of their plan to import Niger Delta thugs. Hundreds of such thugs were infiltrated into Ekiti on the occasion of the President’s visit on Saturday 7 June when he primarily came to commission the war already promised by his Vice. Dozens of them were allegedly arrested by security operatives at Fayose’s Spotless Hotel on June 10 as reported in the IROHIN ODUA edition of June 11, 2014. On interrogation they claimed Fayose invited them for ‘strategic reasons’ as they were paraded with their charms, arms and ammunition. This is, of course, a mere tip of the iceberg, as the dangerous Southwest PDP cabal, among them ministers, have promised to capture Ekiti. Here truly must be the changed Fayose which Jonathan said he was presenting Ekiti on Saturday, 7 June, and upon whose victory, which God forbid, he will now develop the state. Hogwash!

President Jonathan on that day flagged off another of his many wars as in the North East, Rivers, and freshly, Kano and his Vice stayed behind to personally observe the commencement of their one-sided hostilities. Since it has become known that the likes of Yuguda were hankering after his job, that man of the permanent overflowing babariga, would do just about anything to survive.

Ekiti people did not have long to wait. With the intent to ‘shock and awe’, they started with the state governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, who was tear gassed and shot at, as they broke up a peaceful rally. But if they thought we can be intimidated then they don’t know the doughty Ekiti with a checkered history of confronting, and defeating foreign invaders. Fortunately, the governor showed that minion something of the Ekiti make-up on that day. The foreign legion was, appropriately, led by an Ijaw police officer, one Gabriel Selenkere, the state MOPOL Commander, who was alleged to have served as Jonathan’s ADC when he was Deputy Governor in Bayelsa. Apparently, the man who most probably does not take orders from the state Police Commissioner had impudently told the latter when confronted by him: who? Which governor? I know no governor when the Vice President is still around. I have orders from above’. If I may ask of this impertinent man, what federal project was his Vice President waiting behind to commission in Ekiti ? That, incidentally, is what Nigeria has been turned to by these cretins.

But all that is only the opening glee as there are worse lined up for election day in the state. As it happened in 2003 when a substantial part of Fayose’s votes were allegedly ferried in to Ekiti from the amala empire in Ibadan; the reason Baba chose whatever contract in Ekiti suited him, they intend to have police men and thugs escort stuffed ballot boxes into the state on 21 June. Thugs are also primed to disrupt vote counting in APC strongholds. They will be under orders to shoot into the air but if unsuccessful, to shoot directly at the people. They have equally recruited some mid level rogue elements within INEC who will ensure that voting materials are either not supplied at all, or brought in very late to polling centres where they suspect the APC candidate will win.

The most sinister of this criminal gang’s plan which is already ongoing in all Yoruba states, however, is the devilish process of political recruitment to which former governor Segun Oni referred during the APC Mega Rally in Ado-Ekiti. Having been used to maximum effect in a particular Southwest state where millions were turned to literal political slaves ahead the 2011 general elections, it is now being extended into all the other states and as I write this, I have a copy of their membership application form which the Lagos PDP is already distributing. I am reliably informed Fayose is doing the same thing in Ekiti already. The phony empowerment organisation coyly attracts recruits with promises of jobs and credits but the two most important questions on the application form are: the applicants’ Voters card number, for purposes of cloning ahead the 2015 elections, and his/her mother’s name, for ritual purposes.

The initiation process, so beguilingly simple is extremely dangerous going by what a nearly entrapped woman confessed. According to her, she was ferried, with others in a luxury bus to a certain town ostensibly for empowerment. Getting there, they were asked to fill a form in which it was compulsory for them to supply their mothers’ names and voter’s card number. Suspecting foul play she gave wrong names for both herself and her mother. Then into an inner room where a Moslem cleric was waiting to administer oaths of allegiance. After this came a herbalist for another oath. From there they were herded to another town in the state to swear to two powerful Yoruba Deities one of which is reputed to suck the blood of those who backslide. Then comes the dark large space inside the building where they all stood on blood as a man in white emerged with a gourd of water for the final oath-taking. She said she pretended like drinking the water but did not. Engr Oni has warned against going to seek help from people who will make you swear to oaths, naked in a coffin and thereby succeed in making you their slave for life. Awo, the Avatar, must be squirming in his grave.

If care is not taken, these questionable characters will turn most of the youth in Yoruba land to political zombies who they will use as bargaining chips for their political harlotry , especially in 2015 and even beyond.

Obviously, they have, in their giddiness, forgotten that there is God. As a result, they cannot remember how God miraculously took Israelites out of Egypt or, nearer home, how God saved the likes of General Oladipo Diya from certain death in Abacha’s gulag. As the Lord liveth, they will fall victims of their own diabolical plans as Ekiti will never return to Egypt nor will it ever again be ruled by crooks. Ekiti, the land of honour and distinction requires not ragamuffins but a visionary leadership. Vote Fayose and turn this distinctively unique state into a plaything for not only President Jonathan and his Niger Delta boys but also the likes of Buruji Kashamu and Bode George.

God forbid.

We must all therefore refuse to be intimidated come 21 June 2014 whatever the enemy’s armada. For them, nothing is sacred or sacrosanct. They will therefore descend on us in all their fury, believing we will vote with our legs. But as Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu never ceases to say, power is never served ala carte. We must stand our ground and shame these vampires. We must vote John Kayode Fayemi overwhelmingly to victory.

June 15, 2014